-The Times of India PATNA: Though Bihar has witnessed a steady decline in neonatal mortality rate (NMR) in recent years, it accounts for second highest total number of neonatal deaths in India. With NMR at 28, the state accounts for 11 per cent neonatal deaths in the country. NMR is defined as death of infants (within one month of birth) per 1,000 live births. Incidentally, every year around 30 lakh live births...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Poultry farmers can now afford to count their profits before their chickens hatch - and they are big, with chickens weighing on average twice as much as they did 50 years ago. The broiler chicken of today, a product of controlled breeding, weighs around 2.2kg as compared to 1.2kg before 1960, say veterinarians and chicken farm owners. Contract farming started in India in the early 1960s, taking...

-The Hindu A systemic reform of the health sector in order to meet the key objectives of equity, efficiency and quality is long overdue. In this, the Central and State governments need to make interventions intelligently, decisively and strategically so that the poor reap the benefits How does Prime Minister Narendra Modi's focus on population, health and subjects like public hygiene, the facilitation of toilets and ensuring preventive health through yoga fit...

-The Hindu   Even villages with higher toilet coverage, and households that had some family members using the toilet did not see any difference in health Is building toilets improving health in India? New evidence has raised troubling questions about India's 25-year strategy of pushing people to use toilets as a way to improve health. In a paper published on Friday morning in the medical journal Lancet, researchers led by Thomas Clasen of the U.S.-based...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...